


Apples and Oranges

by Queue



Category: Good Will Hunting
Genre: M/M, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2006, recipient:fairy_tale_echo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-01
Updated: 2010-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-05 14:27:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queue/pseuds/Queue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sean once told Will he didn't know fuck-all about real loss. Will didn't bother disagreeing with Sean at the time, since not only was he right but also if Will had given him shit at that particular moment he'd probably have wound up in the fucking lagoon being run over by some fat tourist in a Swan Boat. If Sean were here now, Will would argue the point 'til the Curse got broken and the Babe came home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apples and Oranges

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fairy_tale_echo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairy_tale_echo/gifts).



> Mille grazie to the following, in no particular order: (1) Giddygeek, who nitpicked my Southieisms and vetoed my carillonish with grace and style; (2) Dira Sudis, who read bits and squeed usefully and generally behaved as she always laudably does; and (3) Janet, the nation's coolest AARP member, who fed me when I grumbled and turned the volume down when I asked.

  


  
  
  
  
  


  
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_It is a matter both of wonder and regret, that those who raise so many objections against the new ... should never call to mind the defects of that which is to be exchanged for it. -- James Madison, _Federalist Papers no. 38.

 

The Nova makes it out the Pike, down through the land where insurers roam free, and all the way through the tangled start-and-stop mess around fucking New York before there's even one gas-hungry cough from the engine. Will knows Chuckie knows what he's talking about when it comes to cars, but Jesus, for a piece of shit on the outside, this thing sure hell acts like a Caddy when it comes to getting where it's going. Will's on 80--the number, _that_ number, the one he's had in his head since he budged a US map from that ritzy little Harvard Square travel store the day Skylar left--by the time he has to stop for gas and a piss.

Fucking Chuckie. Morgan on the body work, yeah, sure, and Will knows Billy put in his time and more looking for parts and hooking 'em up one to another, but the car is Chuckie's monster. It's Chuckie's creation, Chuckie's gift. Will doesn't stop giving Chuckie shit out loud, expecting a mouthy fucking comeback or a hard shove from the front passenger seat (Chuckie as a _passenger_, who'd have fucking thought?) until three and a half days in, when Boston's salt-air smell finally fades out of his nose and the glare off the Wyoming flats is brighter than he knows Chuckie'd have the head for.

80's for Skylar. An easy number for a hard trip--two to get out of Boston, 90 and 84, and then right across the goddamn country until he's already in California and hooking one more turn won't make that much of a difference.

* * *

 

Chuckie's jeans--every single fucking pair of them-- wear through in this one place, high on the inside of the left thigh, where the bulge of his dick makes the denim on one side rub against the denim on the other. Since they were thirteen this has been going on, for Christ's sake. There's a lot of ways Chuckie's never going to be any older than his mother makes him act for church and funerals, but other ways the fucker hit "mature" early on.

One of Will's favorite things to do is to get Chuckie up against a wall and get a hand in there, work his fingers right into that hole, tear it a little along the way, and then cup his hand under Chuckie's balls and rub his knuckles up against Chuckie's dick where it's hard all down the inside seam of Chuckie's jeans and just tease the ever-loving _fuck_ out of the guy.

The best is when Chuckie comes in his pants, cursing Will the whole time until he runs out of breath and starts gasping like a fucking runner, grinning open-mouthed and shaking and sweating up a goddamn storm.

Those nights, Will _wins_.

Will's always liked--always _needed_\--that, to get to Chuckie like that, see him pushed and coming and helpless under Will's hands. And Chuckie, man, Chuckie's always let him, Chuckie's always been into it. Shocker, in some ways, but then Chuckie's not always what he looks like he'd be. Most of the time, maybe, but not always. Not by a long shot.

Will wonders if anyone is.

* * *

 

About three miles out of Sacramento, taking the turn for the last numbered road down to Palo fucking Alto, Will remembers the o-chem lab at the Au Bon Pain and starts tasting a little panicky what-the-fuck.

Because med school's Skylar's last gasp with the money she got when her dad passed. This doctor thing, it's the whole point of California for her. Not Hollywood. Not Disneyland. And she definitely did not come out here to see about a guy, no matter how much she thought she wanted Will to pack his ass up and go with her. Whereas Will...well. The point of California for Will--the only point he's thought of so far besides seeing how close Chuckie's Nova really can get him to Hawaii--is Skylar.

So it's just like he told her, just like he said in her room that night when she pushed him to the wall and made him get scared out loud _again_, like he hadn't done in _years_, not since he stopped picking the wrench and started hitting back. It's just like he told her that night. Now he's in California, because she asked him to come (she did, right? back a while ago there? she _did_), but she's not going to really want him there. And he's _here_, banging a U in this Nova that looks like Frankenstein's fucking car, headed down a random hot-as-shit road across the fucking country from the Fenway and Dot Ave and, Christ, the fucking _Dig_, stuck in California with someone who really doesn't want him there and just wishes they had a take-back.

And he can't take _this_ back. Right? He's here; this is it. Chuckie's proud of him, Sean's wicked proud of him, he wrote Sean a fucking _note_, for Christ's sake--didn't write one to Chuckie, Chuckie not being that much of a reader, but still ...

He's got to make out here count.

* * *

 

_[T]he most important parts of mathematics stand without a foundation. --Niels H. Aber_

 

Half Will's sheet is mayhem charges, and every single one of 'em makes him think about the rest of the guys: the way they fight, the way they don't, the shit that goes down in between.

Chuckie's stand-up in a fight, every time. Any time Will starts something, Chuckie's there. Always has been, even though he never liked fighting the smaller kids, which since they were ten has been about everybody their age or younger and a lot of the guys in the next few grades up, plus not a few fathers on the block. It's not a fear thing, which to anybody who actually _knows_ Chuckie is pretty fucking obvious. It's practical: if Chuckie took on all the bantamweights who wanted a go, he'd be busy one Christmas to the next New Year's and broke as shit on top of it. Morgan gets crap from Chuckie, but Chuckie sticks by his rule otherwise, doesn't lay more than a smack on Morgan every once in a while.

Morgan, Jesus. Smaller than all the rest of them and always will be, no matter how big he might get, although at this point a growth spurt don't seem too likely. Billy beats on Morgan some, but that's more out of irritation with Morgan's fucking mouth than anything else; Morgan always has been more bullshit than brain, which also ain't too likely to change. And he's a wicked fucking mooch--never bought his own lunch in his life, let alone bought a round down the bar. Good kid, though. Doesn't back down, no matter who's trying to whip his ass.

Billy's a good guy, too, but Chuckie he ain't. He's smarter, for one thing. For another one, he talks less, not that that's hard given that Chuckie suffers from chronic diarrhea of the mouth. Plus you wouldn't think it to look at him, but he can't hit near as good, regardless of the size of the guy on the other end of his fist. And he doesn't quite get what Will's about, thinks Will's a little queer. If it'd been up to Billy, they'd've thrown Will a time on his twenty-first instead of pushing his ass out the door and into his fucking car. That's one reason Sean was the only one Will told: from scrappy kid to scrappy kid, a secret worth keeping.

Anyways, Will figures Chuckie solved it pretty quick, one way or another.

Will's the exception to Chuckie's rule. Chuckie's always gotta have his hands on Will, some time or other. Used to be some of that was fighting _for_ Will, back when they first met, before Chuckie got to know Will's ripshit side a little more up close. Now a lot of it's about fighting _with_ Will, brushing him back when he charges the plate, breaking the fucking rules.

Rule. Whatever.

Will can't remember a time he and Chuckie fucked when one or both of them wasn't banged up some way before they ever got started.

* * *

 

Will pulls himself out of the Nova in what Palo Alto calls downtown and Skylar is just fucking _there_, sitting at a café table across the street, four wicked thick books stacked next to her and another one open under her hands. Jesus. What are the odds? Under the white jacket-thing they must give everybody that passes their fucking MCAT, she's decked the way she always was: smooth black shirt, pants that fit her like they were made for her, scattered freckles across her chest, thick dark hair pulled back in an elastic. Mint, even if she does play it down. Will stands there, ass barely off the seat, fucking _car door_ still open, and watches her.

She raises her head and looks at him.

Her face ... fuck, her face doesn't change at _all_. She just sits there, staring at him. No wave, no smile, and she doesn't look away.

It's the take-back he knew she'd want, live and--for all Will knows--on camera for real. Will can feel his face freezing to match hers, feel himself slip back behind the show-nothing front he put up every time somebody raised a hand to him until ... well. For years, anyway, so it's an easy face to find. At least _something's_ easy around here.

Fuck.

Will looks away first, feeling like he ran out of air somewhere back in Salt Lake City and his body's just now catching on. He looks away, and then he's _walking_ away--away from the car, away from the girl, away from the whole goddamn mess. His steps pick up, faster and faster, until he's booking like the cops are right on his ass. By the time he stops, he's in the middle of some random street, sun burning the back of his neck, fists clenched hard against the impulse to hit someone he doesn't even know.

It isn't that he doesn't want her. He _does_. He's _here_. He's driven Chuckie's goddamned car all the way from everything he ever even heard of to Cali-fucking-fornia, for Christ's sake, where Chuckie's never gonna come no matter what Will tells him, even if Will wanted him here.

But it isn't only her that he wants. It isn't, maybe, _only_ anybody. He needs his options open--he needs to be able to move around, to breathe whenever he wants to, to fight _and_ fuck and to know they both work for the person on the other side of the equation.

Skylar isn't an option; she's a constant, a fixed value. Skylar will make him choose.

Whereas Chuckie ... Chuckie has _always_ been an option.

And if Will's not there--taking a crowbar to the wall Chuckie's tearing up the other side of, firing one home at Chuckie's fucking linebacker shoulders and ducking the swing Chuckie aims his way, six inches up Chuckie's ass and listening to Chuckie groan like a dying man--he doesn't have to know for sure whether that's still true. He can imagine the set's open-ended: values leading to infinity, no finality, no cut-off.

When Will finds the car again--not real tough, considering the size of Palo Alto and the number of rust spots on the goddamn Nova compared to the showroom stuff on the streets--he's headed for Los Angeles before he can think.

* * *

 

For Will, the point of going across the river is always to prove something.

When he's bored, he boosts stuff from Wordsworth. Not always even things he wants to read, either. Just what he can get out the door with easiest, which means it's usually bad science fiction or a mystery for Chuckie's mom. Not a lot of challenge there, but it beats the shit out of polishing floors, so that's one up for Will in the end.

With the stuck-up blond guy, fucking cool kid, the night they meet Skylar, it's all about who's smarter. Still not tough: no question the asshole talks better than Will, if by "better" you mean like a lit Mensa wanna-be, but also and equally no question who actually knows what the hell he's talking about, and it ain't Mr. Harvard. After that round, getting Skylar's number is the cherry on top--but shoving the napkin in Blondie's face is the whole fucking sundae.

With Chuckie, it's about proving who needs more and who's more needy, same as everywhere else. The fact that the answer is always the same doesn't stop either of them from double-checking every once in a while, just to make sure of ... whatever.

Like in March that one year, when they're on their way up Church Street, three-quarters pissed on the Border's cheap margaritas just for a change of pace, and Will's eyes catch on the basement lights of that fucking folk club in the back alley behind the Coop. Chuckie's a lightweight when it comes to anything harder than horse-piss draft, so Will doesn't have to work too hard to swing him around and get him headed down the slippery cobblestones, and he pretty much trips his own laughing ass into the dark doorway one storefront down from the club.

In a heartbeat, Will's up against Chuckie's back, hips pinning Chuckie to the wall, one hand locked like a vise around Chuckie's left wrist, twisting that arm hard up behind Chuckie's back.

"Don't. Fuckin'. _Move_," he says into Chuckie's ear, dropping his other hand down to flick open the buttons of Chuckie's jeans and shoving that hand inside Chuckie's briefs to haul his cock up and get a good grip on it. He kicks at Chuckie's ankle and Chuckie, gasping for breath but still laughing like a fucking loon, spreads his legs as wide apart as he can in the tight space they're in. The laughter part stops quick enough, though, once Will's hand gets going on Chuckie's cock, which is hard as hell and a lot wetter than Will might have expected if he didn't have extensive experience with Chuckie's thing for fucking in public. Will's got a limited range of motion in this position, but it don't matter much: the other thing about Chuckie and liquor is that tequila revs his motor like crazy, and inside three minutes Will feels him seize, shake, and start shooting all over the wall and Will's hand to boot. "Fuck," Chuckie says, laughing and breathless again. "'S one hell of a way to get warm, man."

That night doesn't end so good: Chuckie's still too plastered to move real well, so he takes a digger down the steps to the bus station and they wind up getting bagged by the university police. Will pulls the bigger charge because his sheet's about twice as long as Chuckie's, plus one of the guys on the bust has a hard-on for him from the last time they were there and fixes it so the public nudity and drunkenness charges against Chuckie wind up on Will's docket instead. Suits Will: he's gonna land in court for mayhem anyway this time, seeing as how he broke the nose on one of the campus cops before they took him down, so the extra charges'll just wind up lesser includeds and be wiped off the books.

Besides, it was worth it.

* * *

 

_Numbers constitute the only universal language. --Nathaniel West_

 

Sean once told Will he didn't know fuck-all about real loss. Will didn't bother disagreeing with Sean at the time, since not only was he right but also if Will had given him shit at that particular moment he'd probably have wound up in the fucking lagoon being run over by some fat tourist in a Swan Boat.

If Sean were here now, Will would argue the point 'til the Curse got broken and the Babe came home.

Not that he's figured out all that much about loving himself, or even liking himself very much of the time: Sean helped, Skylar didn't, and between that and the cube farm Will figures he's doing good to break even. But loss...yeah, that he definitely gets.

See, it turns out that Tri-Tech has a satellite office in Thousand Oaks, out 101 from LA.

And Will still doesn't want to spend his life sitting around and explaining shit to people. That's one good thing--one of way more than one--about demo work: no fucking explaining things to cinderblocks and plasterboard, just wham, bam, and move on to the next pile of crap that needs destroying. But he likes to eat and he likes to drink, even if it _is_ pretty much impossible to find a decent packie here in CorporateTown USA, and he's gotta do something to pass the time.

So he calls Lambeau, hearing Tom get pissy in the background when the Big Boss actually answers his own phone (Christ, when is that guy gonna get his nose out of Lambeau's ass and get a real life?), and does his best Genius Protege shuck and jive. Lambeau, sounding weirdly excited for a guy with a scarf addiction, sets him up a shoo-in interview with Tri-Tech's database-encryption group. Will puts on the suit that makes him look like a lawyer from the People's Republic and waltzes in and charms the shit out of a bunch of guys who seem like they probably don't get out a whole lot. And suddenly he's em-fucking-ployed, driving a flashy new 1998 something-or-other Tri-Tech gave him as a signing bonus, with the Nova up on blocks in an off-street garage.

He hates it.

Look, it's not like it's the first-ever time he's pulled down a paycheck; one way or another, he's been paying his own bills since he was fourteen, so the novelty's kind of lost on him there. And he's sure as hell not doing the job for the suits, or the coffee breaks, or the cube rats he works with. So the only reason to be there--the only one he wants to think about, anyway--is to use this freaky fucking mind he somehow wound up with for something that at least keeps him distracted.

Except what they do? It's not math. It's not even _numbers_. It's bureaucracy bullshit, shell games on a grand scale, everything designed to look fancy as hell and not an equation worth a fucking token in the place. Will's the ultimate eliminatable middle man, the one he never wanted to be even when he was craziest in love with Skylar and what he expected her to need. It's a huge goddamn waste of the time he has to pass, and it's making him nuts.

He's losing it.

* * *

 

It's funny how Chuckie never seems to wonder if Will's gonna be there, but he's always looking around to make sure anyway. They'll be walking across Will's crappy back yard, sixteen and a half feet door to door, Chuckie with the Dunkins in one hand, and he'll check back over his shoulder, make sure Will didn't vanish in the last two seconds.

Eventually it dawns on Will that Chuckie's _always_ looking at him. Watching him go into the house after a night at the Wonderland, watching him come out again every fucking morning. Chuckie watches him over endless longnecks, across fights they're losing and fights they're winning, through eyes forced open against the pleasure when Will's jacked him hard and slow for way too long and he's right at the edge of coming but he'll die before he'll admit it. Chuckie's seen Will bruised, broken, in jail, drunk off his fucking ass a thousand times, lying and stealing, dropping a flat of bricks an inch from his foot; he's made Will laugh so hard through a mouthful of Kelly's fries that milk came out his fucking nose. Chuckie's built Will a _car_, for Christ's sake.

And after all that time watching Will, turns out, Chuckie knows Will better than anyone else has, ever. Chuckie's got the fucking goods on Will. Always has had, right from the beginning. Will never really had a choice about letting Chuckie in. _Let_, hell: Chuckie's always just _been_ there, inside, getting away with shit no one else would ever even try.

In LA, that feeling that someone sees Will as Will--not a brain, not a patient, not a life preserver or a punching bag or a whiz kid with a chip on his shoulder the size of a fucking tree--that's lost. Gonzo. Vanished into the sunshine and the plastic West Coast bullshit.

Gone like the goddamn caramels, only for real.

* * *

 

Six months after Will starts up with Tri-Tech, one of the guys who interviewed him finds his cube and hands him a dinner invitation, with a follow-up for breakfast sitting right there in his eyes. Will looks him up and down, Hollywood haircut to shiny shoes and the _man_-icure in between. Not too beat, all things considered: nice skin, good mouth, smooth hands, wicked long bulge down the left inside seam of his nice pinstriped pants.

And a little--just a little--hint of red scabby shit around his nostrils to show he's still doing coke, even though the eighties went out about eight fucking years ago now and didn't have a lot to show for it even before then.

Fuck. Coke. Smooth skin. _Pinstripes._

And just like that it's Chuckie on the screen in Will's head, bruised and ready, big scarred hands on either side of Will's face, holding it still so he can watch Will as they fuck. For a guy who can't ever seem to keep his mouth shut, Chuckie's a quiet fucker at moments like this: mouth open so he can do his best to breathe, legs locked careful around Will's waist and hips snapping up helplessly each time Will slams back into him, and all the time watching Will go at it, watching the two of them slip and slide and _do_ each other like it's the last chance they'll ever have. There's brick dust on the sheets from their clothes and hair and faces, scratching Will's palms where he's bracing himself right by Chuckie's shoulders.

There's never _not_ brick dust, splinters, hidden small pieces of plaster and cinderblock and the rest of what they pound their way through every single day. It's always fucking rough, every time.

The next time he shoves back into Chuckie's ass, Will stops, braces himself on one hand and leans in hard with his hips--God, he loves it when Chuckie's voice breaks like that--and shifts one hand so his thumb hits a bruise on Chuckie's shoulder, near the new ink Juli Moon put there last month. He presses in hard as he can, harder than he could if he wasn't right where he is, on Chuckie, _in_ Chuckie. Chuckie's head goes back and his legs tighten--"Shit, you fucker, my _ribs_!" Will thinks, but he can't make his mouth say those words or any others--and he draws one long breath in on a belly-deep moan.

And then he's coming, _hard_, harder than Will's ever seen him come, spurt after spurt, all over his belly and chest, without ever even getting a hand on his goddamn dick.

It's the only time Chuckie ever doesn't have Will in his sights; it's the only time Will gets away with fucking _anything_. When Will's fucking Chuckie, there's no room for awe. It's all noise and coming, all moans and jerking and slickness and heat. It's all right there, out in the open, raw and angry and _right_.

And the light fucking dawns on Marblehead.

Will's out of his chair and pushing past the pinstriped zeeb before he's even figured out where he's going, other than the hell out of this building and what passes for this life. But he gets there soon enough: next thing he knows he's in front of the off-street garage, finger frantic on the opener's button, already calculating what the next few moves will have to be before he can get the Nova the fuck off the blocks and back on 80 to the East, where it--where _Will_ belongs.

And suddenly--just like that--he's all set. He is good to go. He is _gone_.

* * *

 

Epilogue

1.  
_It is not impossible that these circumstances may have occasionally betrayed me into intemperances of expression which I did not intend; it is certain that I have frequently felt a struggle between sensibility and moderation; and if the former has in some instances prevailed, it must be my excuse that it has been neither often nor much. -- Alexander Hamilton, _Federalist Papers no. 85

Bullshit. Intemperance _all_ the way, buddy.

2.  
_It don't snow here / It stays pretty green / I'm gonna make a lot of money / Then I'm gonna quit this crazy scene  
\--Joni Mitchell, "River"_

Jesus Christ. Okay, fine, not a bad idea as far as it goes, but look: Joni fucking Mitchell, who Skylar's neighbor used to listen to all the time and cry so loud you could hear it through the fucking _walls_? Not even Robert Downey, Jr. can make _that_ shit cool.

3.  
_I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there. --Richard Feynman_

_Ya_ suh. Now that right there? That is the God's honest truth.

* * *

  


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